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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23750437">Not Enough Stars in the Sky</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Andovia212/pseuds/Andovia212'>Andovia212</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Steven Universe (Cartoon)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/M, Steven Universe Gets Therapy, Steven Universe Has Anxiety, Steven Universe Has PTSD - Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, connverse - Freeform, literally this is just pure effing fluff, pure fluff, star symbolism, steven universe has depression, these are things he has in all of mine naturally</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-04-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-04-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 16:09:15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,486</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23750437</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Andovia212/pseuds/Andovia212</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Stars were always everywhere in Steven’s life. From the designs on his dad's van (his only childhood home) to the open night's sky in summertime where he could gaze at the cosmos before he ever knew what was out there to almost every single shirt he owned. From the stars plastered across the clothes of every member of his family to the small glowing stickers on the wall of his bedroom once he actually had a room and house. The brightest star in Steven's life, though, is perfectly clear to him.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Connie Maheswaran/Steven Universe</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>89</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Not Enough Stars in the Sky</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>                Stars were always everywhere in Steven’s life. From the designs on his dad's van (his first childhood home) to the open night's sky in summertime where he could gaze at the cosmos before he ever knew what was out there to almost every single shirt he'd ever owned. From the stars plastered across the clothes of every member of his family to the small glowing stickers on the wall of his bedroom once he actually had a room and house.</p><p>                From the starry-eyed look of absolute wonder he got the first time he ate a Cookie Cat (innocent and overjoyed) to the nickname of his mother that was then used for him (accusatory and belittling).</p><p>                So when he came across the idea, he honestly thought it felt far too on-the-nose at first… but it quickly grew on him. He’d been in therapy for a little over a month (three times a week at the very least), and it hardly felt like he’d been in it for a day with how little progress it seemed he’d made. He still struggled to get out of bed before the afternoon, he spent far more often than not feeling angry or scared or anxious or depressed, he still felt like he could corrupt again at any moment, and he barely had access to his powers from how overused they had been during his corruption which meant he just generally felt useless on top of everything else. When he found out a lot of people made bottles full of papers stars to represent their moods to show progress over time, he couldn’t resist the idea to try it for himself. And after a few days of practicing and making sure it was something he wanted to do, Steven started counting stars.</p><p>                He based it on colors like he’d seen others do, and he even wrote down the corresponding colors that he decided upon using the construction paper he had picked up from the store even if some of them were a bit cliché.</p><p>                Black for depression. Blue for sadness. Light pink for anxiety. Dark pink for anger. Purple for anything else that was negative that couldn't be summarized in the previous colors.</p><p>                Red for love. Yellow for happiness. Green for peaceful. Orange for confidence. White for anything else.</p><p>                He definitely felt like he didn’t have everything covered properly, but after just a few days, it was clear it would take a while before he could use half the colors anyways. He recorded his moods with the stars when it felt appropriate, ignoring things that lasted less than half an hour or so, and even still the bottle he’d gotten had several layers built up in it with the only light color being the pastel pink.</p><p>                It was almost two full weeks before Steven made and added a yellow star. He’d made red ones here and there and a couple green when he was having okay moments, but usually any good emotions didn’t last long enough to warrant a star. Not to give a true reflection of how he was consistently feeling. It didn’t surprise him at all that Connie was the cause of that first yellow star, though. She’d been the cause of at least half the red stars already just by being herself and by doing what she could to remind him how much she cared about him. He was still beyond hesitant to accept that love and definitely couldn’t feel like he deserved it, but she showed it to him as if it were fact. He knew at the very least how much love and appreciation he felt for her, though.</p><p> </p><p>                It took a long time for the colors of the stars to shift, and the transition was incredibly slow with evident and obvious relapses… but he kept up with it still. Once he started on the road, he settled for making just one star per day with a color that could summarize the majority of that day. It was an easy way to save time and space, after all. His stars weren’t always perfect despite how many of them he’d made, but he found that just made them better. Nothing was perfect, and the quality of the origami had little correlation with his moods. The fact it went unaffected helped him feel better about it—reminded him that even on his worst days, he could do something right and if something went wrong on a good day, that was fine as well. It worked effortlessly into his daily routine to reflect on the day and make a star to represent it.</p><p>                He didn’t even fully realize just how much the overall color schemes of the stars had shifted until one of his visits back to Beach City when he brought his filled bottles and jars inside to prevent the glass from overheating in the car from the summer heat (each labelled with the dates they were started and finished) and lined all the glassware up on the table in order. It was an incredibly slow gradient, and even his most recent jar had a fair amount of black and purple and pink stars, but it was infinitely easier to focus on just how many more white and red and yellow and green stars there were. Placing the first bottle beside the most recent one was such a clear sign of progress, he’d been crying his eyes out over it when Pearl found him there. (When she found out it was from pride in himself and saw the difference for herself, she started sobbing as well to nobody’s surprise.)</p><p> </p><p>                It had been a couple years since he’d stopped making the stars every day that he had the idea, and Steven was surprised it had taken him so long to think of. The jars and bottles were displayed in a line on a high shelf in the kitchen of his apartment, shown off with pride and placed as a reminder to himself of how far he’d come even if it didn’t help on every bad day. But those were, for the most part, a lot fewer and farther between than he could’ve ever imagined back when he started making stars.</p><p>                It was at the age of 22 that Steven began making stars again, but this time it was for a different reason. Each star was the same soft, light blue color, and he started making as many of them as he could. He did, after all, have nine years of backlog to get through. He still took his time on it, though, knowing he had plenty more of it to complete his task and wanting to enjoy and savor the whole process.</p><p> </p><p>                Two years later on their anniversary (the date they’d decided would be their dating anniversary every year that is), when he’d been finally caught up and (probably) had every single star, Steven gave his gift to Connie. It was a bit larger than he’d anticipated when he came up with the idea, but there were plenty of larger art pieces out in the world than the beautiful, ornate flower statue made from hard resin and every single tiny star he’d agonized over. One star for every single day since the day they’d met.</p><p>                Rather than singing it, Steven let Connie read the poem he’d written to accompany the gift. He’d already written her so many songs over their eleven years since meeting that he wanted this to be proven as special.</p><p>
  <em>There’d never be enough in jars.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>There’s not even enough in the sky.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>There will never be enough stars,</em>
</p><p>
  <em>to say how much I love you,</em>
</p><p>
  <em>but I sure did try.</em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em>4,126 stars: 4,126 days you’ve lit up my life</em>
</p><p>                Once she’d stopped crying enough to read the entire poem, she’d hugged him so hard she tackled him. Stevonnie made an appearance shortly after once they gave each other a moment to breathe, and the existence of the three of them was one full of so much love and utter joy, no color coordination could’ve ever expressed it.</p><p> </p><p>                A few more years down the line, he never in a million years would’ve guessed she’d complete his poem in a way he didn’t know it needed. No getting down on one knee but simply holding him tight in the first place they’d fused into one as she whispered for only him to hear on a day he hadn’t realized was quite as important as it was—the exact date they’d first met, fourteen years prior. “Five thousand one hundred fifteen stars. Five thousand one hundred fifteen days you’ve lit up my life, Steven Universe… I want to spend all the rest of them as your wife.”</p><p>                All the cosmos shimmered bright in the clear sky, but they were still far too dull compared to the glow of the two stars standing together in the soft sand.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I don't think I have ever written anything this fluffy before. </p><p>Also, I definitely got the idea for this from something I've done before. I tried to keep track of my own depression and anxiety using paper stars, but it just made me too upset. However, I HAVE filled an entire large jar with 500 paper stars before. When my little cousin was adopted, we had been waiting for my aunt and uncle to get a baby for eight years. So in the last month or so before he was born, I made as many tiny little paper stars as I could and wrote a poem to put on the jar as a decoration for his bedroom (with the color scheme of the stars matching his room). The poem for him was "We wished on every star, til you came from afar, then we capture them all, to show you this jar." And honestly? Best present I've ever given anyone in my life. </p><p>And finally, I completely think Connie would either end up being the one to propose in the end or she'd explicitly tell him that she's ready for it when he is. The anxiety he'd have over trying to propose a second time? Nope. It'd be something they'd both discuss heavily before the actual proposal no matter which one would do it.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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